The news that the CIA (and probably the NSA and DIA as well) are going to find and prosecute the leakers is excellent news.

The director of the CIA has launched a major internal probe into media leaks about covert operations. In an agencywide e-mail, Porter Goss blamed “a very small number of people” for leaks about secret CIA operations that, in his words, “do damage to the credibility of the agency.”

According to people familiar with the Goss e-mail, sent in late January and classified secret, the CIA director warned that any CIA officer deemed suspect by the agency’s Office of Security and its Counter Intelligence Center (which handles internal affairs) could be subjected to an unscheduled lie detector test. CIA personnel are subjected to polygraphs at regular intervals in their careers, but one former intelligence officer called the new warning a “witch hunt.” Others said Goss’ e-mail was narrowly focused and did not suggest agencywide, random lie detector tests.

Witch hunt? Traitor hunt.

The CIA has grown long in the tooth. Heck, the entire intelligence community has and too many have thought their seniority was a protective shield. And these delusional souls have decided they will run national security – not the President.

To understand this community you have to understand how small it is, due to compartmentalized security were information is fragmented, how few get ‘the big picture’.

There are some like me who sit outside and have enough physics and mathematical skills to understand if you pointed the Hubble telescope earthward it could read some amazing things – and all of its systems are unclassified. To be honest, a well educated person can extrapolate where the classified world is. In 1985 the Cray computer was the top of the line – it is now on my desk.

So few work it for their lives the ones who stay on become legends in their own minds. And they decide they know best. As Mac Ranger has mentioned more than once, some of these demigods have even convinced some naive Senators that they are mankind’s brain trust. Rcckefeller and Graham should be worried. Because the only way a rogue CIA agent is going to avoid spending the rest of his pathetic life in jail is to have evidence on a bigger fish.

These Senators better pray they were not the conduit of leaks to the new media.

I for one would have no problem with the trial of a Senator on leaking classified information, especially since it would send a signal to the Intelligence Community that we are serious about protecting classified information.